Race and the Drug War

There’s no doubt that the drug war disproportionately affects poor and minority communities and that black communities in particular have been particularly affected. But the article points out that the drug war wasn’t just foisted on the black communities, but in many cases those communities welcomed it with open arms.

Michael Javen Fortner, a political scientist at City University of New York, is hoping to complicate the story that the Rockefeller laws, and others like them, were foisted on black people by white people. His book, Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment, out September 28 from Harvard University Press, tells the story of Harlem’s struggles with drugs and crime from the 1940s through the passage of the Rockefeller laws. Key to this story is the role of Harlem’s residents in forcefully advocating for a tougher, more punitive approach to the neighborhood’s “pushers” and addicts.

Yes, many of the origins of the drug war were racist, and racism has often fueled the drug war, but as we’ve noted here before, in the early days of drug policy reform, it was often difficult to get black communities involved in reform. I saw that first-hand in communities where I lived. In recent years, that’s changed, particularly with powerful leadership in organizations like LEAP, NAACP, ACLU, and some church groups.

Nixon’s war on drugs was aimed primarily at hippies protesting the Vietnam War, particularly on college campuses. Most of these protesters were white. Though not a war protester, I was busted twice during that time: 1971 and 72. And most everyone I knew that got busted was white (and replicated across the country on other college campuses).

Not to be rude, darkcycle, but do you own demographic research. It is literally available at your fingertips. And to be clear, drug arrests skewed dramatically toward blacks in the late 70s, early 80s, and continued their disproportionate ratio through today. But that truth does nothing to negate the accuracy of my comment.

Ethnic minorities were the primary target of the drug war from Anslingers time onward. The Hippies were the merest blip on the radar, your own subjective experience aside. (Interesting that you note “..almost everyone I knew…” who go busted was white. It won’t surprise me in the least to find out that most everyone you knew was white, period. You ought to know better than to take your own subjective experience and generalize that everyone had that same experience. If you lived in Compton, everyone you knew who got busted wouldhave been black and hispanic.)
I know I can do my own research. I wanted YOUR source. Why? ‘Cause I’m callin’ you out. I’m betting you don’t have one.

DC, more whites got busted in the 60’s and 70’s due to pure volume of people toking. More blacks went to jail, but most of the Ganja toked then was by Caucasians. Still is. You miss the entire point playing one up. Racism has been the underlying factor used to remove blacks from the streets. Cages replaced lynching. Now it’s a profit deal. Now it is starting to include more whites and women, due to the profit in max cap contracts. Mandatory Minimums.

Racism is only a tool to provide cheaper labor. Stigmatize a group and they become less human and caging them becomes less intolerable. Pigments are arbitrary. American Indians had slaves. Egyptians had slaves. Pay them less and segregate them from the general public. There is no racist gene inherited, its all taught the same as arithmetic. Slavery was replaced by tractors and trucks, bailing machines and combines. Cheaper to fill a tank than house and feed a dozen slaves. Racism was kept to keep blacks wages lower. Low IQ redneck bossman cracked the whip. Still do. Then the great migration to the cities to build skyscrapers and golden gate bridges. Then when it was built, the projects and welfare.

I graduated High School in 1971 and never met a black person until we needed a drummer for a garage band. The public school was segregated due to the real estate agents wouldn’t sell property to people of color. Still didn’t when I left in 1975, so I never really had a chance to be racist since it wasn’t pertinent. Until the MLK riots a dozen Pa rednecks blocked the main 4 lane highway from the city. Other than that it really hardly ever came up. When I moved to Florida they didn’t know what to do with longhairs so I went to the segregated part of the factory. My coworkers were welcome in my home and I had a ghetto pass to the jukes in the quarters. We all smoked pot and racism wasn’t an issue.

Same after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and the public swimming pools were integrated, our township built their own pool with the same rules admitting property owners only. Had to get a picture ID. Western Pa had as many racist as Birmingham. But we were Yankees so it didn’t seem to matter. There were also a lot of German decedents. I wondered why there wasn’t a German internment like they did the Japanese. I met Nazi soldiers at a hunting camp during big game hunting season. Quite a few Pittsburgh cops too. Very racist and proud of the notches on their belt and scars from doing battle on the streets.

Fascism was popular among the wealthy. All the Pgh. papers headlined were riots after a Steeler game, as there were after MLK was shot. Busing was the cause of many more fights and riots. Schools were torn up. The alternative to properly funding schools. The argument if memory serves, is that the suburban schools were supplemented with property taxes to improve conditions. Somehow our suburban school was never bussed to the city. It was always looming over our heads like a behavior modification technique. In my opinion that is the GOP agenda. Each of their issues from integration to abortion to anti gays to anti pot is all based on numbers. Not too many West Burro Baptist protests in Compton Planned Parenthood’s, just Indiana and Caucasian districts. As the of color races increase and Caucasians decrease paranoia has taken over. Fear of payback I reckon.

Ganja prohibition also served industry and was about fossil fools replacing Diesels peanut oil and Fords ethanol. Hearst simply made everyone who toked the same as blacks. The white criminal aspects. Like today, Ganja was not a threat to society. Hemp was a threat to Rockefeller, Carnegie and Mellon. The AMA opposed Anslinger and Nixon. At the time. Now they seem to be as corporate as the FDA. The CSA including cannabis was supposed to be a temporary listing until the Shafer Commission came out. According to Sanja Gupta. Then Nixon rejected it, the Whooton report and all previous reports back to the Indian Hemp Commission. Same as Clinton after the 1999 IOM report, still sitting at the HHS before the FDA thinks about testing it. Now Incremental Retardation keeping the Band Aid biz alive. When any fool can see it has no business being listed as a scheduled substance, let alone #1.

I was busted 4 times between 1970 and 1972, from a few roaches to a pound. Never went to jail. Never put on a record or went to court. A cop told me it wasn’t worth the paper work, but still confiscated the pot. White privilege I guess. Or they didn’t want to spend funds if Shafer removed it maybe. I’ve been toking daily ever since but that was the last lid I ever sold, and still don’t have a criminal record. It would be hard to believe I didn’t fit a profile of a toker so just smoking didn’t seem to be a big a problem as was selling it or skin color.

I’m cool with it as I am with the laws of physics concerning Ganja. You can’t argue with gravity or the boiling point of water. Or Ganja properties or so called race. Africa is home of humanity and as humans migrated North they had no need of as many skin pigments so they lightened in color. Much of it is diet. If caucasians eat only carrots they will be as orange as Jon Boner. In the 21st century it all seems like programmed stupidity Hippies saw through 45 years ago. Oh btw, the fucking Hippies changed the world, without money or violence. Kept Ganja from extinction and continue to question authority. Stigmatized into insignificance no different results than racism. Except it’s still PC where open racism has gone underground. Ignorance repeating bigots mantra as if it isn’t as bad. Hate is hate and hurt is hurt dude. Doesn’t matter what color your skin is.

Why Do YOU Think They Call it DOPE?
* Cannabis Hemp: The Invisible Prohibition Revealed
* The Elkhorn Manifesto
* Marijuana and Hemp: The Untold Story
* The Nation of Apathetic Puppets By John Pilger
* Maintaining Dysfunction

“Look, we understood we couldn’t make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure. We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue…that we couldn’t resist it.”
– John Ehrlichman,
White House counsel to President Nixon
on the rationale of the War on Drugs.

“[Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact
that the whole problem is really the blacks”
“The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”
~ H. R. Haldeman,
Nixon’s White House chief of staff

(Usually prefaced by *for-christs-sake Bob* or John, or whomever he drunk dialed to chat with that night – They say later he would talk to the portraits of presidents/leaders on the walls.)

But, I think you’re both right – via way of a John Ehrlichman quote:

“Look, we understood we couldn’t make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure.(*emphasis mine*)
We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue…that we couldn’t resist it.”

= John Ehrlichman, White House counsel to President Nixon on the rationale of the War on Drugs.

Much of that is in the HBO Documentary “Nixon by Nixon: In His Own Words” (2014) That I happened to catch on HBO-HD a couple nights ago. (It’s online via the HBO site, or youtube, etc.)

They cover nearly all of the the wildly politically incorrect Southern Strategy – AND, the seemingly endless wellspring of racist/classist hate that in recent years has resurged & its started to look less like a spring, And more like a broken fire hydrant!

I’d like to coin it “The Silent Majority 2.0” = which D.Trump is now tapping into like he found The Fountain of Racial Animus – free for all takers that choose to tell pollsters they ‘Love Trump’. (It might really be 3.0, or 4.0 ?? But that ruins the “2.0” idiom)

AND another, that makes me leary of all the Pols pushing to shift the WoD over into “fighting opiate addiction”

FFS -They aren’t listening to their own criminal justice reformers, that’s the same *Well-Intentioned Road To Hell* – that they sold people on the first 3 or 4 times they banged this can’t lose political drum!

And in case you missed it, Find a way to watch the new “VICE Special Report: Fixing the System” this is an important & up-to-date documentary with serious coverage of the battles on the horizon.

And you’ll see the buzzwords/code aka “Criminal Justice Reform”, giving people “Second Chances” (= drug courts), ‘reducing penalties’ where there shouldn’t be any to start with, etc.

We have to make it clear they can use drug courts for people dealing with serious non-plant drug addictions – meth, crack, heroin, PCP – or those huffing paint/various aerosols, ‘bath salts’ unknown designer drugs, the *any & everything they can get their hands on* “addicts”…

So long as they truly WANT help, So that it’s not mandatory (jail or rehab) – Unless they are actively hurting others = committing acts of violence, NOT for panhandling and/or being a ‘homeless’ drug-user… vagrants don’t need to be jailed – Although, if its the dead of winter and they ask = okay.

We can’t let them have another go at “fighting dangerous drugs” unless there are enough legal alternatives.

I’d say cannabis & maybe psilocybin mushrooms, or the other stuff (MDMA?) That therapists want to try for PTSD & other patients – some people with depression without interference from the DEA.

Alcohol & Tobacco aren’t enough options for adults that want to expand their conciousness, or experience “altered states” – I am 100% serious, and I think we should make certain that the current “mass-incarceration reformers” understand this situation!

Lest they conntinue on with another bad Prohibition Sequel = Like, “StarTrek V -(Redux) the search for a *higher power*…

I wonder if Michael Jason Fortner’s book apprises the government’s role in the 1940s U.S. opioid trade. As many already know, during the desperate years of WWII, U.S. government officials gave mobster Lucky Luciano a virtual conveyer belt to channel heroin into black American neighborhoods in exchange for Lucky’s cooperation in organizing Longshoremen union members to be on the lookout for waterfront Axis saboteurs and spies.

I hesitate to use the word ‘ironic’ to describe a government program affiliated with genocide, as well as one which manages to convince its victims to cooperate and advocate for their own demise. ‘Efficient’ might be a better word, as might be ‘hypocritical’, or just ‘evil’. The black community would have been less willing to cooperate with the government’s drug law enforcement efforts had they known from the start they were being set up by their own government. Times have changed.

OT
How UK prime minister David Cameron has shifted from his earlier “revolutionary” drug reform beliefs:

“His views on reform have not changed, Kushlick suggests, but political necessity means that he’s unlikely to voice them again in his time leading the country…..pressure from the US, which doesn’t encourage partner nations to become more lax on drug laws, also plays a role in suppressing Cameron’s revolutionary past.”

In other words, he knows what is the right thing to do but chooses to do the wrong thing for reasons of political expediency… a hypocrite of the worst order.

He’s a tool of the banksters, and owes his position to them. They got rich off of prohibition and their apple-cart is in serious jeopardy of being smashed to bits.

Like most pols beholden to them, he made the popular noises needed for election, and then began the usual diffuse-and-delay tactics the bankster minions engage in when real reform threatens.

It should be rather telling that despite the global rise in the desire for re-legalization, that the ‘leaders’ continue to front for prohibition. That impetus comes from somewhere, and people around the world are starting to suspect from whence this comes.

The banksters are about to trash the world economy again. All the signs are there. If the rest of the world figures this out in time and takes action, there might be 7B+ potential bounty hunters on Earth.

USA Today has an article on the unusual treatment of DEA agents gone astray. It appears a job as a DEA agent comes with its own get-out-of-jail card:

September 27, 2015–In one case listed on an internal log, the review board recommended that an employee be fired for “distribution of drugs”, but a human resources official in charge of meting out discipline imposed a 14-day suspension instead. The log shows officials also opted not to fire employees who falsified official records, had an “improper association with a criminal element” or misused government vehicles, sometimes after drinking.

“If we conducted an investigation, and an employee actually got terminated, I was surprised,” said Carl Pike, a former DEA internal affairs investigator. “I was truly, truly surprised. Like, wow, the system actually got this guy.”

Why bother being a drug merchant when all one has to do to sell illicit drugs without penalty is to join the Drug Enforcement Administration? Or the CIA?

The Prohibs have dropped their jaws or mouths on the floor when I mentioned that Dr Donald Tashkin who did a study on Cannabis and the lung where he found smoking Cannabis did not cause lung cancer or posed no risk on it and they were even furthered to disappointment when I mentioned the National Institute of Drug Abuse and Federal Government funded the study, just a good example of their reaction, TOTAL SILENCE:

You cannot expect ‘Special Olympians’ to compete with even an average person.

Likewise, you cannot expect narrow-minded prohibs to venture anywhere outside the area of their expertise…when they have none.

The delay being experienced in response time is similar to that probably experienced by a dinosaur; smack it on its tail, and it might have taken a while before the brain notices and reacts. The prohibs are waiting on their ‘brains’ at ONDCP to come up with a Party Line for a response.

Top-down organizations are never as nimble as grass-roots ones. All these organizations popping up like plastic plug-in toadstools from Kevvie’s Project SAM astroturf illustrate that perfectly.

ONDCP has a think tank consisting of 5 or 6 intelligent people that live comfortably on their bloated tax dollar salaries and therefore are not ready for the street fight messing with millions of intelligent awakening minds that are living from paycheck to paycheck.

The ‘in’ meme and the talking point du jour back then was ‘grandmothers’. We even had Joyce Nalepka showing up at Cannabisnews.com and the DrugSenseChat as ‘Grandmother’ (she didn’t dare say much).

Needless to say, it was more desperate reeeeeeaching on the part of ONDCP to find some traction.

To give you an idea of just how lame it was, in the material the ONDCP would assume the (expected) ‘grandmother’ to be completely incompetent on the subject, with the offer of “We’ll tell you what to say”.

Said it right in the body of the text. No dancing around, no insinuation. They’d be just overjoyed to tell you what to say. Not the slightest bit of self-awareness as to how that looked to kids who had to read Orwell’s 1984 in junior high school, and whose first lesson about propaganda came from that book.

Because it wasn’t aimed at kids, but at those who had power over them. As if kids would never, ever read those words and know them for what they were. Typical authoritarian mindset.

When I saw that 13 years ago I realized the extent to which the entire enterprise of prohibition was top-down. Meaning, I understood how incredibly vulnerable it is.

They’re like Cold War Era Commies, dependent upon a ‘Party’ to do their thinking for them, instead of doing their own research. And like the old Commies, the prohibs aren’t very good in the reasoning department.

A beginner’s guide to prohibition and the war on drugs
Drug prohibition (in the colonial era) started in 1870 in South Africa when Indians were banned from smoking cannabis. Then in 1908, native Africans were banned from using it as well. The British Empire also criminalized Greek hashish before WW1, so they could open up a market for Indian Charras.

Drug laws were originally racist, but also protectionist for certain industries and powerful people, and then, from the 1960s, they were also used to control political dissidents.

1992 AD : USA Jim Montgomery, a paraplegic who smoked cannabis to relieve muscle spasm, busted for two ounces of marijuana in Oklahoma, arrested and sentenced to life plus 16 years.

Marijuana – The First Twelve Thousand Years
The African Dagga Cultures
By the time the white man came to Africa, dagga had become a part of the native’s way of life. In the quest for altered consciousness and escape from the humdrum characteristic of nearly all societies, primitive or highly industrialized, Africa had become a country of dagga cultures whereas Europe besot itself in alcohol.

Police’s “cannabis obsession” to the detriment of all in South Africa,
inclrhino’s and wildlife
Universally, the banning of cannabis began with racism and oppression. The indigenous people’s rights to smoke it were trampled on by invading colonialists who were ignorant and indeed fearful of its effects. In order to show their supremacy over the locals they began victimizing anyone who smoked it. This racism can be seen when South Africa became the first country in the world to criminalize cannabis.

“1983 AD : The USA government (Reagan / Bush)orders American Universities to destroy all 1966-76 research work on cannabis.”
The government were book burners…. where have we heard that before?
Seriously though, and with a hat tip to Godwin’s Law, the DEA were desperate to hide the news that studies showed that cannabis shrank tumors… this is one of the biggest news stories of all time that no one has heard of. The cover up makes Watergate pale into insignificance.

Every Minute Someone Gets Arrested for Marijuana
The nation’s law enforcement agencies are still arresting people for marijuana possession at near record-high rates, according to the latest national data released today by the FBI. In 2014, at least 620,000 people were arrested for simple pot possession — that’s 1,700 people per day, or more than 1 per minute. And that number is an undercount, because a handful of states either don’t report arrest numbers to the FBI, or do so only on a limited basis.

In the first season of Adult Swim’s Black Jesus, the titular hero discovers that the tomatoes he and his friends are growing in the community garden seem to mysteriously and magically have the same effect as marijuana.

“God’s love will get you fucked up quick,” Jesus says. […]

When Jesus and his friends decide to create a community garden (to grow weed) the vacant lot they choose is littered with trash and the soil is not at all appropriate for farming. However, in the theopoetics that Jesus deals in (biblical Jesus as well as comedy Jesus), where metaphor and symbolism are essential teaching tools, the garden represents more than healthy food or a place to grow weed, it is a transformation of the neighborhood and those who live there.

“I think Jesus just wants us to be better people,” says Ms. Tudi, a local marijuana businesswoman.

This transformation is most notable in Fish, an ex-offender who resembles the disciple Peter in his stubbornness. Early in the first season Fish has very little faith that the garden will work, to which Jesus tells him, “Faith of a mustard seed. That’s all I ask. You gotta believe in something. Why not believe in me?” Soon after, following threats from Latino gang-bangers, Peter tells Jesus, “That no violence thing is your rule, not theirs.” To which Jesus replies, ““Do you have any fucking faith at all? I told you Pops has a plan, he’s gonna lead us through this,” recalling the frustration of Jesus with his disciples as they struggled with the profound implications of his teachings (Matt. 15:16, Mark 7:18).

By the end of the series, however, Fish stands tall—notably in solidarity with the gang-bangers—as the community garden is shut down and Jesus is committed to a mental health institution by law enforcement. “It’s all a big test of faith,” he tells the others in the last episode, understanding that faith isn’t about winning or losing but about persevering, even forgiving the somewhat villainous Vic, Fish’s landlord and the prime force behind their eviction from the garden.

I agree with Ms. Tudi. Behold, the latest marijuana comedy to do battle with the forces of prohibition. When it gets to this level of provocation, the prohibitionists need to make their escape into the hills. But they won’t.

“Set to begin selling its first joints on New Year’s Eve, the Associated Press reported Tuesday, the resort will grow its own marijuana and feature a smoking lounge with food and bar service, in addition to a nightclub. Santee Sioux leaders, including tribal president Anthony Reider, plan to eventually add slot machines and an outdoor music venue to the hotspot.

The Santee Sioux’s jump into the pot business comes just months after the Justice Department issued a new policy in June allowing for American Indian tribes to operate marijuana businesses similar to those in states where the drug has become fully legal (e.g., Colorado and Washington).

The resort has its critics—and will have to adhere to strict measures, including a prohibition against guests leaving the reservation with marijuana—but it represents an enormous economic opportunity for tribes that, across the country, tend to have very little.

The Santee Sioux tribe, which already runs a 120-room hotel and buffalo ranch on its 5,000 acres of land, expects that this project could generate up to $24 million a year in profits.”

ot Is Marijuana a Single Species?http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread28685.shtml
First, pot is old. Cannabis diverged from the hops plant, humulus, around 28 million years ago, according to a genetic analysis by researchers at London-based GW Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturers of Sativex, a whole plant cannabis medicine.

if you released every drug offender from state prison today, you’d reduce the population only to 1.2 million from 1.5 million.

Nevermind the millions of other people who have spent time behind bars before today, the families torn apart, the disenfranchisement, the loss of job prospects etc. Those things don’t lead to more incarceration, right!

Drugs may not be a factor in every crime, but various drugs being illegal might precipitate a gateway to crime, a bizarre gateway in dire circumstances, such as those requiring illegal activity in order to self-medicate and survive, or live well.

The old argument still applies. Drug laws have a corrosive effect on trust in law enforcement, the laws, and government itself. It’s nothing new. The final effect has often been conjured as fruit from a poisoned tree. The bottom line is all about how people treat one another. As people imitate their ignominious government, they follow the government’s example in all things. This can include people shooting one another to make a point, as in the current conflict in the Middle-East, or walking into a theater and killing strangers at random.

It’s difficult to precisely gauge the collateral effects of the drug war. For that reason, it’s made a tool of demagogues and charlatans. Scapegoating drugs relieves the scapegoater of all the work needed to analyze and remediate a particular social problem—eliminate the drugs, and the problem is eliminated—except it’s not. Scapegoating is one of those things, like authoritarianism, that takes the path of least resistance when solving a problem. Violence and oppression, versus analysis and discussion, is the easier path. It’s typical of bureaucracies to do the least possible.

Something that has puzzled me for some time: How the heck in a Country with ~315 million people do LEAs coordinate their efforts to make sure that only one person is arrested at the correct time interval? Also, why the heck do they do that? It just doesn’t make any sense at all. Is this just another one of their tricks to get more overtime pay?

What’s even more disingenuous about that statement, is it a) Doesn’t consider what percentage of property and violent crime is related to drugs (or more accurately, drug prohibition), and b) I found the statistics that’s pretty clearly based on, and it doesn’t count those sentenced to under a year. SENTENCED to under a year makes you think it’s just misdemeanors, but almost all first time felony drug possession plea deals come in at under a year (when you violate probation and get sent to jail that is; where I lived the failure rate of felony probation was close to 90%; they tried as hard as they could to find reasons to violate people. Like one day, they suddenly decided legal marijuana substitutes ought to be included for drug court participants, then violated and imprisoned over 1/3rd of all participants in a single day).
And even a single felony is life altering. I spent 355 days in jail after 2 years on house arrest then being violated via fabricated testimony; I got out of a permanent felony mark but my life was still pretty much destroyed, over an empty bag of coke, because that’s still enough for felony possession in FL; I wouldn’t show up on those statistics.

Considering 90+% take a plea bargain to avoid mandatory minimums, 3 strikes and gag orders not permitting a medical defense asking for a jury trial. So your “choice” becomes a drug worrier fund drive. $4500/mo forced rehabilitation (oxymoron), whiz quizzes, Uncle bracelets, job loss, evictions, driving on roads suspended or revoked. Tuition assistance banned for life. Pell Grants banned for life. Food stamps and any Federal assistance banned. Organ transplants prohibited, even though research states cannabis is good for transplant recovery. Stigmatized, denigrated. Dogs shot, Grandmas shot, babies and their mothers shot. The most vulnerable with debilitating illness wrested to the floor with weapons pointed at their faces. Because of Sabet and his Gossip. Trillions spent banning medicinal research and forfeiting homes. Confiscating cars and kids clothes.

Farming out siblings to trailer park foster care. Faith based rehabs circumventing standards. Cop soldiers taught the C.S.A. bible. While 157 Medical Schools have absolutely no Endocannabinoid Science Department or anyone to teach it. These are the excerpts called on by the propaganda box. It’s getting old giving these even older decrepit lies any energy what so ever. They are not worthy of our ears hearing it or time wasted on non reality. Stop dragging these germs out onto stages. Let them die in the cob webbed dank musty shadows from whence they came. Scum o de Earth.

Another Establishment shill with zero credibility with those he seeks to influence. The train left without him on it, and he’s cluelessly standing in the rain at the platform, checking his watch with increasing irritation, wondering when it will arrive, because he thinks it belongs to him.

Disgusting. When they raided WAMM they did the same to a Polio patient. Auto weapons pointed at her head. I’ve heard of a woman in Florida with MS if memory serves. Who said her biggest fear is cops ordering her to raise her hands and then shooting her for hesitating. This is not policing, its military ambush. Rubber stamp warrants are also a problem. No one is ever held accountable. Always blame the victims. Since burning plastic is bad for the environment I’ll have to spend more money buying a hemp flag just to burn it. This is not the America I was raised in.

Anyone want to see Kevin Sabet (Kev-Kev) in New Zealand spreading LIES, I watched 10 mins of the video and I have long suspected the New Zealand Government paid for his plane ticket, John Key in bed with Kevin Sabet how wonderful:

You know, this good turn out to be very, very good news. If New Zealand isn’t a country where KevKev would feel right at home then there isn’t such a country. So let’s all keep our fingers crossed that he’s not too stupid to notice that they’re his kind of people and decides to emigrate. Heck, let’s all chip in and offer to pay the shipping charges to deliver his stuff. We’d just have to burn it anyway.

The Beast of prohibition was sired here, it has to be slaughtered here. Our Gub’mint loosed the damned thing on the world. It has to be done in by our hands, so the world knows it can safely jettison the US-fronted laws rammed down their throats.

Ashley Halsey III is at again with bad journalism at the Washington Post about drugged driving. Ashley is a big promoter of guilt by association, if not cause. He’s never let facts stand in the way of a good marijuana scare story:

“Every state must take steps to reduce drug-impaired driving, regardless of the legal status of marijuana,” Adkins said. “We encourage NHTSA to issue guidance on best practices to prevent marijuana-impaired driving.”

The GHSA report cited three other studies that differed somewhat in linking marijuana law changes to traffic fatalities. One found that was there an increased marijuana presence in fatally injured drivers in only three of 14 states studied. Another focusing on Colorado said that marijuana-positive fatalities increased by about 4 percent. The third, in California, found no change after marijuana was decriminalized there in 2011.

For Ashley, a marijuana-positive test detecting 11-hydroxy-THC is the same as one testing for Δ-9 THC. All drugs are the same to him. He’s certainly no pharmacologist, and I’m betting he’s never taken a course in chemistry. But that doesn’t stop him from trying to screw up people’s lives by inventing moral panics based on chemicals and their effects, about which he knows nothing.

“This news about Kim Davis portrays him as a more sinister kind of politician. That’s the kind that secretly supports hate, ushering the bigots in the back door — knowing they’re an embarrassment — while speaking publicly about about how none of us can judge one another…”

Frankie’s no John Paul 1. He’s another caretaker. P2 is calling the shots, and Opus Dei is the ‘muscle’, as usual. Frankie won’t go near the Vatican Bank, as what happened to JP1 is still very clear in certain minds. So he has to settle for distracting BS like this visit to that clerk. While the rot in the Vatican…still festers and stinks.

“Obviously, if you live somewhere where marijuana use is legal you might have a few genuine ones laying around, but for the sake of public discretion, you should stick to a fake for you Halloween festivities — unless you’re in a private home where everyone’s cool with it, of course. Fake joints are not hard to come by on the internet, and that’s an understatement — you can order a jumbo one off Amazon for just under 8 dollars. The size is important, because this is the main hook of the costume. You’re not just Jeb, you’re stoner Jeb.”

“…Maia sent me something very interesting: the 2007 DFAF Annual Report, which listed a certain Kevin Sabet as a member of their advisory board in the role of “drug prevention expert.” Sabet was also listed as a member of the editorial board for the journal of the Institute of Global Drug Policy, a division of DFAF.

I reached back out to Kevin to ask, “What gives?”

This time, his answer was rather different.

“Tony, I was on the advisory board along with Jeb Bush, Bob DuPont and others for a few years—that’s all unpaid.” (Emphasis mine – k.)

Birds of a corrupt feather…

Kevvie’s so worried, he had hired one of those ‘reputation protection’ companies that blasts only good stuff about a client on the ‘Net 6 pages deep on a Google search before you get to the real meat. That no longer happens, but that it did says something.

““The momentum to treat marijuana as a legal drug is irreversible,” says McCaffrey, the former drug czar. He no longer accepts invitations to appear on television to debate the issue because he says the networks “only wanted a rented idiot general who didn’t understand that marijuana was harmless and filling America’s jails. The opposition has gone silent. The politicians, police, judges know this is bad policy but they don’t make a peep. So we’re going to end up with impaired surgeons and air pilots. We’re just accepting another drug of abuse.”

Shorter McCaffrey here. Add tinkling sounds for additional effect. Take your pick as to which one you think fits.

And nothing, but nothing beats the sound of a defeated control freak, especially when it was one of the control freaks partly responsible for the Reagan phase of the Drugwar where assaults on our rights took on a faux, plastic moral patina. (Second link in 7:44 posting)

Capozi believes the doorway to legal status opened as his parents’ peers began to die.

“Once that generation’s out of here, it’s going to really open up,” he says. “Within a few years, I expect to be able to put my product on a supermarket shelf with a bar code.”

The passing of the baby boomers’ parents has created the first cross-generational consensus in favor of liberalized laws, says Stroup, now 70. “We knew we were going to win demographically, eventually,” he says. “I just wasn’t sure I’d see it in my lifetime.”

The generational shift change has greatly diminished the organized opposition. Few parent groups remain active; Rusche’s National Families in Action still exists, but its founder now supports decriminalization. Rusche, 75, still believes marijuana is harmful, but she has concluded that the parents’ movement erred in failing to present alcohol and tobacco as the same sort of gateway drugs as marijuana.

“There are a whole lot of arrests that shouldn’t be happening,” Rusche says. “We don’t want to see laws unfairly applied with people of color overwhelmingly being the ones arrested.”

Her longtime ally is startled to hear of Rusche’s altered stance.

“I’m just stunned,” Carla Lowe says. “Decriminalization is just a step to legalization. What we’re seeing today is a grab for taxes and a power play by a fast-growing industry.”

I want to be so damned rude. These people were told waaaaay back in the late 1970’s and ’80’s that exactly the sort of thing Rusche and her equally ignorant control-freak cohort only just now realizes could happen, would happen. And by her admission, did.

And this sought to tell us how to live, and influenced Gub’mint to become the vicious, malevolent force it has become…in order to ‘save’ us, of course. Save us from ourselves.

Here we have a grocery store which sort of caters to the upscale crowd in my hometown, my mother shopped there when we moved into that neighborhood when I was 10. It grew into a chain but it tried to expand too fast and is now in Chap. 11, and selling off a goodly number of the recently purchased stores and a few older ones that are not doing well at their locations. However the original store is still there and in business, they sell packaged hemp hearts, you know like sunflower hearts, shelled hemp seed; I don’t recall the brand and I haven’t looked in their bulk food department to see if they have it there. They also sell hemp oil among other exotic cooking oils. I shop there for certain items, Albertson’s for others, and Fred Meyer for still others. Albertson’s does sell the hemp oil but not the seeds, I haven’t looked for either of those items at Fred Meyer, yet, I usually go there for gardening stuff rather than groceries.

Safeway hemp salads are a novelty item, total rip off. A packet of shelled hemp seed measuring about 2.5″ x 3″ and Caesar dressing with some lettuce. I have been dressing patient salads with shelled hemp seed since the 90’s. Then 200? Nutiva started selling bags of it so that is where I get it. We have organic super markets as big as Safeway, who have been selling Hemp everything for at least 10 years. Oatmeal, cereal, oil, soap, body lotion and yarn. Peanut butter and jelly with hemp seed. Waffles and flour. But Safeway has always resisted it, The only thing left is to let American family farmers grow it. Keep some of the bankruptcies and foreclosures and auctions down.

“Once in the simulator—a 1996 Malibu sedan mounted in a 24-feet diameter dome—the drivers were assessed on weaving within the lane, how often the car left the lane, and the speed of the weaving. Drivers with only alcohol in their systems showed impairment in all three areas while those strictly under the influence of vaporized cannabis only demonstrated problems weaving within the lane.
Drivers with blood concentrations of 13.1 ug/L THC, or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in marijuana, showed increased weaving that was similar to those with a .08 breath alcohol concentration, the legal limit in most states. The legal limit for THC in Washington and Colorado is 5 ug/L, the same amount other states have considered.”

“The study also found that analyzing a driver’s oral fluids can detect recent use of marijuana but is not a reliable measure of impairment.
“Everyone wants a Breathalyzer which works for alcohol because alcohol is metabolized in the lungs,” says Andrew Spurgin, a postdoctoral research fellow with the UI College of Pharmacy. “But for cannabis this isn’t as simple due to THC’s metabolic and chemical properties.”

Researchers at the University of Iowa’s National Advanced Driving Simulator carried out the study, sponsored by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, National Institute of Drug Abuse, and the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “snip”

I suppose we can expect a study out of New Zealand finding exactly the opposite within weeks.

I see the Prohibs have gotten mad and insane when I asked them is it true that Project SAM and other Anti Cannabis groups overt policy is to hate cannabis but the covert policy is to make sure the likes of G. W. Pharma which includes Andrea Barthwell and many former George W. Bush administration members and other pharmaceuticals to have exclusive rights and profit to Cannabis, when this was posted on Stop Pot and SAM Oregon, none of the Prohibs tried to address what I wrote

Evey time they dare to pop their heads out and spew their nonsense, they’re getting it thrown back in their faces at mouseclick speed. Publicly.

More evidence of a top-down direction – instead of a grass roots one – is their continued use of traditional media in order to sway public opinion. Generally, the only people who are receptive to their propaganda are the ones now too infirm from age to comply with their directions.

They really, truly do not understand this medium. Stoners made, run and own the ‘Net. They realized about a year ago (20 years too late, as usual) that they have very little chance with those they’ve already BS’ed in school. They’ve more-or-less ceded the cybersphere to us.

Because in the cubersphere it takes just a little quick googling and a few mouseclicks to research their data, find it faulty, and prove it so with additional information.

This is why they have changed tactics, and are trying to end-run democracy by making frivolous lawsuits with no standing, like the ones that OK and NE made in suing CO over legal cannabis. More proof of the authoritarian bent of prohibs. One not gone unnoticed by their intended victims, who are fighting back successfully.

So long as traditional media has an online presence, the prohibs will never be able to ‘reach’ anyone but the dimmest bulb in the box. And in every Comment section, they learn of just how outnumbered they are. Custer had better odds than drug prohibition has today.

Your post was uplifting to me and I thank you for it, but it looks like John Law isn’t reading the quotes. Here in Oregon pot is legal to buy today and Action News Team is covering the story like an outbreak of Ebola. They’re assuring us that cops will be increasing patrols to catch drugged drivers, who are on the rise because Time Travel. They’re assuring us there will be a special 4 PM broadcast today on how to protect children from this dangerous outbreak.

4PM? I guess they didn’t want to make it 4:20 in case the kiddies ‘might get the wrong idea’ or some other bilge.

Really, the older I get the more truth I see in Ogden Nash’s observation: “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we think our children are naive.” Those ‘children’ are laughing up their sleeves at any who think this has any real relevance to them. They’ll keep doing what they always have.

He and others of his kind are being forced to read the writing on the wall, and no matter how much he tries to turn his face away, it gets rubbed in that wall. He, and every prohib reading there is seeing their end in the volume – and earned vitriol – of all those answering the drivel with facts.

Can one state sue another for damages? Could CO sue OK and NE for damages and costs of defending against their frivolous suit? The current suits claim that CO has damaged the other two states, which if not proven, is a claim which is damaging to the state and people of CO’s reputation. It would also provide an opportunity for the attackers to defend their malicious lies, told to support their premises. Of course, those claims will be proven to be lies, lies which anyone with a google machine can debunk. The fact that the prohibitiots did not do so is proof of their malice. Those should convince any ‘real’ court that damages and malice are proven. The costs of defending these stupid suits should be automatically sued for. I suggest suing each state for $10Bn. That ought to get their attention.

Andrea Barthwell hasn’t been associated with GW Pharm for years. Yes, they hired her and paid her a couple of hundred thousand dollars. In return the company received absolutely nothing. I do recall the fans of highly unlikely conspiracy theories swearing that it meant that FDA approval of Sativex was imminent. Well that was right around the year 2010 and Sativex still hasn’t gained FDA approval.

Really, stuff like this needs to be fact checked from time to time. Around the turn of the century the spot price for gold fell to ~$250. That meant that cannabis was more expensive than gold. I can’t even recall the total number of times I heard that “cannabis is priced higher than gold” long after the price of gold had recovered. It wasn’t uncommon even after gold was trading in excess of $1000 a troy ounce.

Can’t we leave the reckless disregard for the truth to the prohibitionist parasites and they’re sycophants? They’ve basically got it down to a science. “Never get into a limbo dancing contest with a prohibitionist, you’ll never be able to go lower than those people” …that’s my metaphoric motto.

I know it’s not on topic and is blatant self-promotion but Allan and I have just finished this year’s calendar and I think it’s awesome! We do make a good team.

Be warned, it does contain nudity (me, not Allan!), so adults only please. If pretty naked medical marijuana nerds is your thing, please have a look and maybe, just maybe, if you like, buy one! We can alwys use a few extra dollars.

Amazingly, the Pope seems to have received my message, that message being the Vatican will be under constant, critical, scrutiny for past and present crimes against humanity if the Holy See doesn’t back off from its drug enforcement nonsense.

The old ways don’t work anymore. One of the big problems associated with persecuting heresies is that the machinery gets used for all types of unrelated reasons, most notably to eliminate people for political or racial reasons, or to stratify a society. For instance, in an ongoing case, the mayor of Piedmont, Missouri, ordered a drug raid against a woman merely because she was always giving him a one-finger salute. She was also told to stop circulating a petition directed against increases in local water bills. No drugs were found in the raid. The ACLU has joined in her lawsuit against the offended mayor.

funny how things work… first day to purchase “recreational” herb in OR so I had to go to town. I go the Greener Side in Eugene, on Oak St. I know the owners, we met at one of the GMMs and then I was part of the protest when local PD arrested one of the owners a couple of years ago.

Took my camera (of course). Talked to the people waiting for admittance, wished everyone a Happy Legal Oregon Day. Went inside took more pics, got a gram of Girl Scout Cookie Dough (I didn’t need to buy any) and headed out.

Walking down the street and a woman is approaching the same intersection I am from a different direction using her blind person cane… and wouldn’t you know it? It’s Elvy. So I walk with Elvy back to The Greener Side, get more photos of Joe and Chelsea, but this time w/ Elvy.

I had Sting’s “Synchronicity” playing in my head the moment you mentioned Elvy, then read the last sentence. Major LOL.

Yes, that is how it goes. I can’t tell you how many I’ve met in the ‘underground’. ‘Cosmic consciousness’, ‘kismet’, ‘karma’, ‘Indra’s Net(work)’, whatever. Happens to me all the time, and I just laugh, anymore. As a friend put it, it’s an AFGE: Another F-king Growth Experience.

Thanks thelbert, I was even talking about it w/ the guy in the seat behind me on the bus. He went and bought some LEGAL herb as well…

If that shooting hadn’t happened in So OR it would have been a good day… I almost got into it w/ a fella openly carrying whilst I was buying my tobacco at the local inConvenience store. But I know the clerks and kept a tight lip but they saw my expression and the manager asked me what was up. And I told her. And by way of explanation (’cause I know many here support the right to arm bears)… I have nothing against guns. I just have a real issue with dickheads having to expose themselves.

An open carrier is broadcasting the fact that s/he will NOT be a victim nor allow others to become victims, instead of giving such people a hard time, we all should be thanking them, because when an open carrier is nearby, you are safe.

[…] Race and the Drug War Not too many West Burro Baptist protests in Compton Planned Parenthood's, just Indiana and Caucasian districts. As the of color races increase and Caucasians decrease …. So long as they truly WANT help, So that it's not mandatory (jail or rehab … Read more on Drug WarRant […]

Nick Clegg is about the only senior UK politician to even mention the drug war during the last election. Now he’s starting a campaign to to persuade his fellow M.P.s to have the balls to discuss drug reform.

” A perfect political storm provided the catalyst for GW’s rise to prominence in the US last year. Parents of severely epileptic children were flocking to illegal cannabis growers, desperate to get hold of an extract known as cannabidiol, or CBD, which had been shown to dramatically reduce seizure frequency.

Their willingness to go to such lengths is unsurprising in light of reports claiming the oil could dramatically decrease or even eliminate seizures.

Washington, under increasing pressure to decriminalise the actions of despairing parents, could either change the law – still unthinkable on a federal level despite several states legalising medical marijuana – or find a legitimate source of CBD. (Emphasis mine – k.)

And just who gets to determine ‘legitimacy’?

Anybody with 3 brain cells to click together can see what that means, and where this is going. Continued prohibition for the raw plant, while Big Pharma rakes it in. And a lot of us warned about this from the get-go.

Incremental Illness. We need to remove it from the CSA before the next election. An underground version of the Sativex applicator with extract hit the streets about 5 minutes after Sativex was approved in Canada. Cannabis has been used medicinally for thousands of years. Should we tell all those victims finding relief that they should wait until the FDA approves it properly? Like I’ve said, it is pure civilization in CA with dispensaries and deliveries. My only beef is that everyone should have the same opportunity. We need to focus the reformers towards removing Federal laws instead of just counting “wins” with no teeth, in states. Band Aids are not meant to be permanent. They serve a specific purpose and then they are removed. We need to stop the federal mad slashers causing us to need Band Aids. More lacerations in more states and now the Band Aids are written by cops and politicians to restrict and prosper even more than even previous laws. Nothing based on Science. I think people need to either wake up or grow up.